Hours
Two hours and forty-four minutes. Sasuke was timing. Sakura wasn't, but she had a pretty accurate picture from Sasuke tapping his finger against his folded arm every couple of seconds. That, and Naruto usually took ten minutes to come up with something else to entertain himself with, and he'd gone through a healthy plethora ranging from jan-ken-pon to Build a Shuriken House by now.
"I spy with my little eye something beginning with H," the blonde piped up after he had bored of trying to spot a fish in the lake beneath the bridge.
"I Spy again?" Sakura complained. "Do you know any better games, Sasuke-kun?"
A group of younger children on their way to the Academy passed in front of Sasuke. "This is ridiculous," he muttered. Again. "He only ever shows up early when we're late. What kind of jounin is he?"
Naruto's fist met his palm with a meaty thump. "We should punish him by tying him up and eating ramen in front of him. Whaddya say?"
"I say we go on a strike," Sakura said, earning an enthusiastic nod from Naruto.
But Sasuke shook his head. "That won't work against him." Something flashed in the deep onyx eyes. "We need to get rid of that mask."
Several moments of awed staring followed. Someone sneezed. Naruto painstakingly tried to pretend he wasn't impressed. Without a doubt, Sasuke was the most evil one.
Sasuke looked intently at the clock perched beside him. His eyes gradually narrowed with increasing sharpness until the hand struck twelve. He twitched. "Three hours."
Team Seven sighed as one. Even Naruto was deflated by now. They watched miserably as traffic on the bridge slowly increased. There hadn't been a soul in sight when they had arrived at their usual rendezvous point. To say that they had been waiting for a while was a vast understatement.
"Hat," Sasuke said after a long, defeated silence. His teammates perked up.
"Nope," Naruto said confidently. He loved this game because he could legitimately prove Sasuke wrong.
"Hammer."
"Nope."
"House."
"Nuh uh."
"Hair."
"No."
Sakura gazed longingly after a young boy with his mother. "Hamburger."
"Nope."
"Hydrangea."
"Nope. Come on, guys, you're not even close!"
It dragged on. Three hours and eighteen minutes. They had fallen to speaking in mechanical monotones.
"Hawk."
"No."
"Hopscotch."
"No."
"Hippopotamus."
"No – what? Where?" Naruto looked around in wild excitement. Nothing but villagers, food stalls and Sakura's expression telling him that she was not in the mood to be embarrassed by his antics. He rounded and made a face at Sasuke. "Tch, I didn't fall for that one at all, teme!"
Sasuke snorted. "What are you talking about, dobe? That wasn't me."
Naruto blinked. "Eh? But Sakura-chan's voice isn't…" His own voice trailed off. "Hey, wait a second… ahhhhh!"
The genins lunged to the edge of the bridge to stare disbelievingly at the figure perched on the ledge below them.
"You can't be serious," Sasuke deadpanned.
Kakashi looked up from his book and raised a hand in greeting. "Yo. Sorry about that. I fell asleep and had a dream that you three were plotting something wicked against me." He smiled innocently at the three genin trembling above him. "But you guys wouldn't do anything like that. Would you?"
"Heartless monster," Naruto moaned.
In an equally devastated tone, Sakura said, "That's two words, you cheater."
I think this is the first time I've written pre-Shippuden Sasuke with his team. Ah, the good old Team 7 days!
As a side note, I'll be adding a progress meter for Over the Rain on my writing blog. It only takes me around an hour to write a drabble if I have inspiration, so unlike the other progress meters, the one for Over the Rain will simply show how many of the 100 prompts I've done.
